Media Mentions
Blogging has gone from being one of the many things I do, to being an integral part of my identity. What’s more, the space itself has grown from a personal bulletin-board sized corner to a thriving virtual ecosystem. After five years of having been an active member of this community, I seem to have crept into quite a few conversations about blogging, social media and the Internet. Here I am playing peek-a-book in the media.
Blogging by SMS, new rage in cool India
“Says R@my@ aka IdeaSmith: “Blogging on the phone has no extra baggage that blogging on a computer carries: you don’t have to be grammatically correct and your blog post could be just any stray thought.”
- Hindustan Times
It’s bloggin’ time on the IIT Campus
“I love to write which is why I started my blog where I write about the city. One of my recent posts talks about the similarities between the Scarlett Keeling and Adnan Patrawala cases…My popular blog posts have been the ones where I write about love, relationships and friendship.”
- DNA
Now you can earn while you blog
Wrongly quoted as “Idea Smith (as known in her blog), who refused to disclose her name, always loved Bollywood movies. But things changed when she got married.” For the record, I love Bollywood but I’m not married and certainly not to anyone who insists on reading my reviews before watching a movie.
- DNA
“Harassment of women gets virtual on the blogosphere”
- Hindustan Times
Livemint on ‘Slowdown and blogging’
The BlogAdda interview was also featured in a LiveMint video shot at Wordcamp 2008, Delhi and accompanied a Livemint story called ‘Slowdown and blogging’
In the midst of an economic slowdown, the blogging world is buzzing with action. But more bloggers don’t mean more revenues.
-Livemint
Ignore the abusers and keep blogging, ladies!
“..Mumbai- based blogger and photographer, R@my@ who has a blog called Ideasmith, says she knew someone who’s lesbian and was writing under a pseudonym, but she had to go underground when someone who knew her real identity exposed her. “I have had men telling me that my blog is doing well because I’m a woman”, she says. On a blog camp this January, R@my@ spoke about this problem. Her topic was ‘Anonymity is a game of identity’. She did find a lot of women who faced similar problems and were looking for solutions or ways to deal with such negative emotions.
But the most interesting part was when someone who attended the meet later started sending nasty comments on her post. He called me ‘a feminist’ and ‘a man- hater’. I can’t change that. But its immature to say the least, says R@my@.”
- Mail Today
Logging on to Internet Addiction
“I can count on my fingertips my friends who aren’t bloggers, Tweeters and Facebookers”
- South Delhi Plus
“I think addiction of any sort is bad. Internet addiction eats into time and energy that one would normally invest in other activities – hobbies, socialising and relaxing. The Internet is a convenient medium and gives us the illusion of having a social circle.”
- Mail Today
I wrote an article about Twitter which was published in the September 2009 issue of Marie Claire.
- Marie Claire, September 2009
“Reformed Net addicts Ramya (30) and Moksh Juneja (27) said that there is no need to have regulations. “Adults should be allowed to decide what is best for them. It is not fair to govern Internet use.” said Ramya, who restricted her Internet use because of neck pain.”
- Sunday Hindustan Times, 6 September 2009
Scraps pip tweets
“Says Ramya, ” Most people still have to use a computer and browser to connect to Twitter. The numbers that drive Orkut probably don’t come online that often.” Looks like the scrap will be way ahead of the tweet for a while more.”
- Mail Today, 12 September 2009
Continuing the ‘Web’ feature for Marie Claire India, I contributed a feature to the October issue about online safety for women.
- Marie Claire India, October 2009
On your marks, get set, write!
“Blogger Ramya Pandyan who is better known as Idea-smithy in cyberspace, is writing a novel set in Mumbai that revolves around relationships after the advent of internet and connectivity” She completed 50,727 words on Friday. For her the race has been a learning experience.
“I intereacted with other writers, shared the anxieties a writer faces and learnt about the latest writing software available.” says the writer who is halfway through her novel.”
- Times of India, 1 November 2009
A televised debate on real books versus ebooks/Amazon Kindle.
http://www.youtube.com/v/T5BiMf_wbcQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&
- UTV Bloomberg, December 2009
Fight Club, Coma, Not Without My Daughter
“Shine a halogen lamp into the dark corners, examine each drop of blood under a microscope, turn over every particle of dirt till you know each bump on its surface.”
- Campaign India Bookshelf, 14 April 2010
Wagging Tongues Is A Good Thing!
“It (voice blogging) won’t replace my traditional blog but it can definitely add something to it. It might spawn a new movement for people who aren’t writers and feel more confident through speech.”
Shraddha Jadhav Isn’t The Only Mayor
“Keeping the balance between accessibility and privacy is really tricky. Twitter and Facebook fell in my permissible range while Foursquare didn’t.”
“Pandyan finds that it’s the issues she discusses, often those that have no easy answers, that attract offensive responses. “There are rabid ones that blame women’s liberation, working women and women in general for the downfall of society, the breakdown of marriage and even the increase in rapes. Expressing such sentiments in the real world would provoke severe reactions. Online, they are just shrugged off as ‘creepy characters on the Internet’,” she says.”
- Sunday Mid-Day, 20 November 2011
Bandra No Longer Queen Of The Suburbs
My blogpost on the real face of the most marketed location in Mumbai, Bandra sparked off quite a few conversations on Facebook and Twitter. DNA ran an excerpt of the article in their ‘Around The Blog’ section.
I wrote a post commenting on how moral policing & politically driven communal harassment make Mumbai an extremely hostile city. DNA picked up an excerpt for their City section.
What say you?